Who Do You Trust?

Have you ever played one of those teambuilding trust games? The sort where you have to close your eyes and let yourself fall backwards, and trust your partner in the game to catch you. It’s an odd sort of feeling, and takes an odd sort of courage.

Last week, one of my classes unexpectedly turned into a kind of a trust game. We were looking at getting out of a chair, and the process of leaning your upper body forward to bring your weight over your knees. A small and simple movement, you would think.

But for one student, the process of letting go of the tension she usually carries round in her upper body, even just a little bit, turned out to be a lot like those trust games. She was convinced she would fall onto her nose. It took a lot of courage to ignore these feelings and actually get out of the chair. Which she did, three times, without falling on her nose. And it was scary every time.

The conclusion of the group? They need to learn to trust me.

It’s a good start. It helps if you trust your teacher, so that you are prepared to carry out what is being asked, even if it is difficult, uncomfortable or just plain weird. After all, the teacher’s job is to teach you things you didn’t know when you came into the lesson.

So learning to trust your teacher is a good first step. But there’s a far bigger and more important step to take.

You need to learn to trust yourself.

I believe that, excluding illness and injury, your body will work well. If you let it. FM Alexander believed it too. But you need to believe it; at least far enough to give it try. If you are struggling with the idea, I recommend you wrestle with this(*) question for a while, and maybe even give yourself an answer:-

Which is more likely true:
That we are poorly made
and have to ‘do’ something
to perform well
OR
That we are well-made
and have to ‘do’ something
to perform poorly?